Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [12]
The Doctor held up his wristwatch. ‘This is a time sensor, it detects disturbances in the time field. With it I ought to be able to track anything capable of deflecting the course of a TARDIS.’
‘Do you have another sensor?’ Nyssa asked brightly.
The Doctor frowned. ‘Yes, in the TARDIS. Why?’
‘If we split up into two groups, we could cover twice as much ground.’
The Doctor, brightened, admiring such a practical approach. You’re right of course. Adric and I will go, er, that way. You girls can go the other.’ He fished his key from his pocket and slotted it into the lock. It didn’t turn.
He tried again.
‘Is it frozen?’ Tegan asked. ‘Try heating up the key.’
The Doctor stepped back. ‘Thank you Tegan but I rather think the TARDIS has shut us out.’
‘Why would it do that?’
‘I don’t know. TARDISes are telepathically linked to their owners, but the old girl isn’t giving me any clues.’
‘Well, she wouldn’t,’ Adric remarked.
‘And why not?’ the Doctor asked sharply.
‘Well, you’re not its owner, are you? Not really. Romana told me that you stole it.’
The Doctor bristled. ‘That was a long time ago.’
‘Has the TARDIS ever locked you out before?’ Nyssa asked quickly.
‘Never.’ The Doctor looked up, and then around. ‘But I can take a hint. She’s trying to defend herself against something.’
‘Those men we saw in the console room?’ Adric suggested.
‘Possibly,’ the Doctor said guardedly. ‘Likely, in fact. I have the feeling they have something to do with my past.
My future, or my past. I’ve never...’ His mind raced trying to place them. He’d never seen them before but something about them reminded him...
‘Are you all right, Doctor?’
He shook his head, as if to clear it. ‘The sooner we find those time disturbances, the sooner we can leave.’ The Doctor walked to the end of the alleyway, his companions trooped along behind him.
They looked out over a city densely packed with tower blocks, none of them more than a couple of dozen storeys high. The ground was criss-crossed with roadways and monorail tracks. The city thinned out quickly, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of miles wide, but stretched out over the horizon. There was a range of mountains on the horizon in the other direction, and just before that great factories were belching out plumes of black smoke that drifted towards the city across the grey sky. Snow billowed across the landscape, all but blotting out the pale winter’s sun. Little else appeared to be moving. There was the smell of gasoline in the wind.
Acting as a focus, drawing the eye across the city towards it, there was a statue of a young woman with a staff in one hand, an orb in the other. She was tall and broad-shouldered, like an athlete. The overwhelming impression was of power. A stone cloak wrapped over her shoulder almost preserved the statue’s modesty, but also emphasized wide hips and a generous bosom. The statue’s shadow reached the raised roadways at the edge of the park in which it stood. It wasn’t the largest structure in the city, some of the newer tower blocks were almost twice the size, but somehow it dominated the skyline. The Doctor brought it to his companions’ attention:
‘It’s about the size of the Statue of Liberty, wouldn’t you say, Tegan?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘What, never been to New York on a stopover? I thought that was the sort of thing that air hostesses did as a matter of routine.’
‘I never got the chance to be an air stewardess, if you remember,’ Tegan replied scornfully. The Doctor looked away feeling guilty.
‘She’s beautiful. Who is she?’ Nyssa asked.
‘That, Nyssa, is a statue of the Divine Empress, Glory of the Earth Empire, the most powerful single being in the galaxy. It’s a somewhat idealized portrayal,’ he added. ‘The memorial architecture of the mid-Imperial period is a fascinating subject. Believe it or not, most colony worlds have a statue of the Empress on a similar scale. They all use a similar iconography: the orb is a representation of the Earth, as one might guess. If one looks carefully, you’ll see the cloak is patterned